You may be shocked at discovering that you have embraced an illness. Yes, I say embraced.
You say you would never choose an illness let alone embrace it.
I say, you probably would not choose an illness consciously, yet you may well have chosen it willingly. No matter how shocked you may be, you chose it in that you embrace it. If you cannot see the truth of this at this moment, perhaps you can see, subsequent to the diagnosis, that you then embraced the illness. It has become your life now. You give it your attention, day and night. You are crestfallen, and you may be exhilarated as well, as if there were a new role for you to play.
As it is in every turn in your life, consciously preferred or not, an illness is lifting you higher.
I do not say that you have to keep illness to you in order to rise higher. Not at all. The message has already been sent.
We could call illness something like shifting gears off-center, and the gears make a terrible noise. You certainly pay attention. Illness, like noise, is there to get your attention.
I am not giving you a cure-all now, you understand. I don’t even say you have to be cured. Nor do I say you have to stay ill, take it lying down, as it were. Nor do I say to make an illness your occupation or your hobby, dear ones. Illness is not your reason for Being. Of course, it may be your path, or it may simply be a path you take.
Nor do you have to resist illness tooth and nail. You can let go of it. It did its job. It got your attention. You can be done with it. It is not an adventure that you have to accept and explore.
Nor is even a fatal illness fatal. There is no death except of the body. The body is a paltry thing, something poked, moved, touched, running or staying still. The body is something breathed, day and night.
At the same time, an illness does not have to be taken as a matter of course, taken as your due, taken as what you had coming to you.
I want to tell you something else. Illness is not any more real than death is. There are many other things to be than ill. You don’t have to be cordial or hospitable to it.
You do not need to wrack your brain: “How did I deserve this?”
Nor do you have to think: “I didn’t deserve this. This is a shot out of the blue.”
Nor need you think that an illness is your just desserts. You don’t have to take it as your cross to bear any more than you have to take it as your medal of honor.
Illness does not make you more important than you are without it. Of course, having an illness gathers you more attention.
You already gather that something is amiss when illness visits you. You look for the cause to be on diet and all those things, your digestion, staying up too late. You look for an accounting. In that sense, if there be a cause for the illness that has become the effect, it may be in your way of thinking. Your way of thinking may be in contrast to your conscious thoughts. Your surface thoughts may not be the same as your deepest thoughts. Of course, too, attention comes from the thoughts of others.
My advice to you, as it is always, is to find and give joy. Get your mind off you. You do not have to be in the spotlight. Illness is not an indication of how good you are or of how worthy or unworthy you are or of anything. Both rich and poor, the famous and the uncounted, may accumulate illness. Illness is irrespective of whether you are devoted to Me or not devoted to Me, how good you are or not.
In any case, I ask you to not be devoted to your illness. An illness is not really yours. It is an add-on. You don’t have to own it. You can dismiss it.
“But, God, how can I get my mind off my illness?” you might ask.
And I would say, “Let life be your focus, love be your focus, the well-being of others be your focus. Let Me be your focus.”